‘We made music just for the joy of it’, is a quote, describing the pre-WWII music-making by my father, the British composer, arranger, editor, writer and teacher, John W. Duarte. Jazz was his favoured style, but this was soon overtaken by an interest in the classical guitar.
John William Duarte was born on 2 October 1919 in Sheffield, England. His widowed mother had had an affair with John McLagan, a commissioned officer in the London Scottish Regiment, who subsequently died in 1919; so, Duarte was given his mother’s married name. When he was six months old, they moved to Manchester where they shared a house with her parents. He was educated at Manchester Central High School and, later, the Manchester College of Technology (now UMIST), from where he graduated with a B.Sc. (Hons) in 1940, specialising in textile chemistry.
Duarte’s first musical instruments were the piano and the ukulele and it wasn’t until 1935 that a cousin bought him a guitar. It was also then that he received jazz (plectrum) guitar lessons, with Terence Usher (English guitarist, 1909-1969), in a series of 10 lessons spread over 18 months, starting in January 1935, where Usher taught him not only the guitar, but notation and general musicianship.
In later life Duarte would call him ‘a remarkable teacher’. Chemistry and music developed in parallel and Duarte’s lifelong interest in jazz began. The transition to higher education meant more contact with different instrumentalists and he soon joined various dance bands and small groups. As the need arose Duarte also learned to play the trumpet and double bass.
The world of the plectrum guitar was led by some heroes such as Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Teddy Bunn and the French guitarist, Django Reinhardt and his Hot Club de France Quintet. In the late 1930s, as a double bassist, Duarte played in a five-hour long session with Django and Joseph Reinhardt and the singer, Adelaide Hall; and in a concert with Coleman Hawkins. Duarte was also exploring classical music and the guitar’s possible role in it.
In partnership with Usher, they made more than 200 arrangements for guitar duet, sourcing themes from piano music to symphonies. During World War II, Duarte was Chief Chemist in a Ministry of Supply Factory, producing guncotton, material for uniforms and tyres and it was here that he met Dorothy Seddon, who became his wife in 1943.
Usher and Duarte founded the Manchester Guitar Circle in 1946, where Julian Bream was a guest artist in 1947. A seminal moment came in February 1948 when a group from the club drove across the Pennines to hear Andrés Segovia (Spanish guitarist, 1893-1987) give a concert in Leeds. After the concert, Usher showed Segovia some of Duarte’s compositions, including his Sonata Op.4. Segovia expressed an interest in the music and there began a friendship of nearly 40 years. Duarte’s interests and influences continued to grow and in 1952 he was invited by Len Williams (British guitarist and animal conservationist, 1910-1987) father of John, to take on the young prodigy. John’s technical abilities were never in doubt, but it was his musicianship and aural skills which required assistance before John entered the Royal College of Music, London. The Duarte family moved to London in 1953 and in addition to his job as Chief Chemist of Arlington Plastics Development Ltd, Duarte took on a teaching position at Len Williams’ Spanish Guitar Centre.
The 1950s saw the beginning of Duarte’s career as a composer. John Williams premiered several of these new works and, with Segovia’s help, Duarte began an association with the Guitar Review journal, in New York. Initially, he reported on concerts and other events, but this soon blossomed into writing more technical articles and providing new music for their supplements. Duarte already had several pieces published with Schott & Co. (London) and the performance of his Variations on a Catalan Folk Song Op.25, premiered by John Williams in 1956, opened more doors for him. The premiere by Segovia of English Suite Op.31, in 1966, proved to be a major turning point.
Duarte was working for a small industrial company from 1966 but in 1969, was made redundant. He and Dorothy decided it would be a good idea if he tried to make music his full-time occupation and they bought a newspaper/tobacconist shop in Highgate, London. This brought in a regular income and enabled Duarte to spend more time on composing, arranging, writing articles and making further connections with the guitar community in Europe and the USA. The shop was sold in 1973 and music became Duarte’s full-time career. In these four years 20 original pieces were composed, as well as many arrangements and collections made. In the previous 10 years, only 14 original works had been produced, including arrangements and collections.
During the 1960s Duarte continued his interest in jazz, corresponding with the American guitarists Tal Farlow, Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery. At the same time, was forging new friendships with classic guitar players from all over the world. Another offshoot at this time was his educational music – studies, a tutor, several books of easy arrangements for guitar solo, recorder/guitar and voice/guitar. This aspect of his work was very important to him, partly because of the presence of young children in the house, as well as for Dorothy, who played the recorder. Duarte’s ground-breaking transcriptions of two Bach cello suites – recorded by Williams and Segovia, among others – led to an interest in Renaissance music, resulting in many transcriptions of lute, cittern and bandora music.
In the early 1970s, a by-product of Duarte’s new connections was teaching invitations to guitar summer schools in Sweden and Holland, and masterclasses in Australia and the USA, as well as being a jury member for competitions; all of which he was still doing 40 years later. In total, he visited 29 countries as a teacher, adjudicator or lecturer. At this point he was also taking on private students, many of them from abroad.
Articles about guitar technique and harmony continued to flow from his typewriter – his handwriting was really appalling! – including several series, especially on music theory and harmony, in ‘BMG’ (Banjo Mandolin Guitar) magazine and, in the 1980s, Guitar Player magazine. He also started to review recordings in Records and Recording magazine, printed music for periodicals such as The Musical Times and concerts for Music and Musicians. A long-running feature of Duarte’s writing was his ‘spats’ with correspondents in various magazines.
Disagreements about players, teaching styles, (a) or (b)’s knowledge about (x) and a whole host of other matters kept readers amused, annoyed and, when they had finished, relieved, for many years. His lengthy disagreements with the editor of ‘Guitar’ magazine were finally resolved when Duarte was appointed Reviews Editor of the magazine!
As the 1970s progressed Duarte was in more and more demand as a composer. He began to experiment with different compositional styles and systems, incorporating 12-note, aleatoric, pan-diatonic, jazz and graphic elements into his scores. Some performers buckled under the challenge, but others thrived on it. A steady stream of original music flowed from his pen, sometimes up to six or seven works a year. In combination with the educational music and arrangements/transcriptions this was a significant increase in workload.
The reviewing, writing and teaching continued as did his tally of overseas trips, with the USA being a regular destination. 1974 heralded the beginning of his time as Director of the Cannington Guitar Summer School in Somerset, England, which lasted until 1993. Cannington became a focal point of his life and the largest summer school of its type in Europe, with nearly 100 students in some years. Dorothy played a vital role at Cannington, looking after the finances (especially after it became independent of the early sponsors, Universal Edition, London) and the welfare of the students.
In 1980, Duarte received a GRAMMY award for his liner notes to the reissue of Segovia’s 1927-1939 EMI recordings. His writing in this genre extended to more than 250 liner notes and he developed particular specialisms in Vivaldi and all sorts of Spanish music. His notes ranged from the obvious guitar music to Mexican orchestral music, Schubert string quartets and a complete survey of Vivaldi’s bassoon concerti. Overseas visits continued and during this decade he made more than 30 trips, including to Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, USA, Greece, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. He had also transferred from ‘Records and Recording’ magazine to the more prestigious ‘Gramophone’. His spheres of interest here extended to Baroque and Renaissance music recordings, all plucked strings and harpsichord, as well as interviews with many leading performers.
He also made several broadcasts for the BBC, including a mammoth survey of recordings of Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni. A landmark publication was his Melody and Harmony for Guitarists (1980), crystallising all his thoughts on the subject which he had finessed over the previous 25 years.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Duarte’s life continued on this course, with the addition of many recordings of his works. Three of these recordings have featured on GRAMMY award-winning albums: two by Sharon Isbin and one by Berta Rojas. Overseas trips included masterclasses and jury duties in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, USA and many parts of Europe. He persevered with his uncompromising views, but always with the desire for the classical guitar to be seen as equal to any other instrument, not the quiet salon instrument of some people’s imaginations.
In 1996 the writer, Colin Cooper said, ” John Duarte must be the best-informed man alive in matters pertaining to the guitar” and at the Convention of the Guitar Foundation of America in October 1999 he received an Award for Lifetime Achievement.
In 2001, Duarte made a six-centre visit to the USA and, in 2002, visited seven countries, including Russia and Mexico. Having enjoyed good health for most of his life, despite being a lifelong pipe smoker, it was clear by the end of 2003 that he wasn’t well. 2004 saw only two overseas trips and he died on 23 December 2004. His obituary appeared in The Times, Guardian and Independent as well as on the Brief Lives programme on BBC Radio 5. When Julian Bream died in August 2020, many people were surprised to see Duarte’s name on the byline of the Guardian’s obituary, written 20 years before.
From his teenage years, Duarte enjoyed off-beat humour. His life-long love of ‘The Goon Show’ (Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers) inspired his later wordplays and the, sometimes, rather groan-inducing titles of some of his compositions and arrangements. Duarte enjoyed socialising, stories, jokes and the advent of e-mail greatly enhanced the exchange of all sorts of information. His later compositions were typeset using an early version of the music software, Sibelius, although he never quite mastered some of its intricacies!
Since 2018, I have been concentrating on crystallising my father’s musical legacy. This has taken three separate strands: the publication of previously unpublished compositions and transcriptions, the recording of these pieces and previously unrecorded compositions and writing articles for various, mostly guitar-related, websites and journals. In addition, I have been searching for lost manuscripts and incomplete works. In 2021 I found manuscripts of more than 150 transcriptions of lute music and, in November 2022, my wife and I visited the Fundación Andrés Segovia in Linares, Spain and found manuscripts of three works I had assumed were lost. To date 42 pieces, transcriptions or arrangements have been published, with a further seven in pre-publication, four generously filled new recordings have been issued, including one of both of his guitar concerti and three more are due for release later this year. One of these will be some of his jazz guitar arrangements.
The title of this article is also the title of a YouTube film, released in 2024, based on some parts of his unpublished autobiography. The film, in 12 parts and just under 100 minutes long, includes readings from the autobiography, contemporaneous photos and performances of pieces, many of them made especially for the film.
Written by Christopher Duarte